A former Australian human rights commissioner says the Howard-era Pacific solution is preferable to the Federal Government's asylum seeker deal with Malaysia.

The deal has been widely attacked in recent days by the UN refugee agency, opposite sides of government and a group of refugee advocates, who submitted a memorandum to the Australian High Commissioner in Malaysia calling for it to be scrapped.

As human rights commissioner from 2000 to 2005, Sev Ozdowski has now weighed into the debate as refugee groups continue to argue Malaysia has a poor human rights record.

Mr Ozdowski headed a landmark investigation that prompted the Howard government to abolish mandatory detention for children.

But now he is calling for a return to the Pacific Solution, saying at least the Howard government had control over conditions in the centre on Nauru.

"I think it's extremely disappointing; it's however a pragmatic response in the current circumstances," he said.

"At least when we had our detention centre in Nauru we were able to control the conditions in the detention centre. If we send them to Malaysia I think it will be a much worse solution."

He believes the Labor Government's decision to close offshore processing centres in places like Nauru attracted more people to come by boat.

"The key issue is that we relax our border protection policies, so we issued in a way an invitation to people around the world," he said.

"We say to them: 'Listen, if you come to us we will be not as harsh as the previous government was'.

"When you look at the refugee situation around the world, the numbers are going down. But we are attracting more of them and we are attracting more of them mainly because we've got rid of our Pacific Solution."

Almost seven years since his landmark report on children in detention, Mr Ozdowski believes conditions are just as bad today.

"It's in a way an enormous disappointment to me that after initial changes, which aimed at improving the deal for children in immigration detention, we return back to the same which we saw seven years ago," he said.

"It relates to the number of people who are coming to Australia now. At the moment we've got almost 7,000 people in immigration detention. During the peak of Howard government we had 3,500 - so we've double the number of people.

"Government is panicking and trying to do something about it."

He also describes the effects of detention on children as "tragic".

"I saw children self-harming, I saw children going into razor wires, I read reports of attempted suicide," he said.

"Basically what's happening is, children are detained for very long periods of time. The longest a child [spent] in Australian immigration detention was five years, five months and 20 days - I remember that case.

"They are missing enormous opportunities because access to schooling is inadequate. Then quite often the families are breaking down because there not traditional roles for man and for woman any more.

"Quite a significant number of children acquired mental illnesses under the trauma of immigration detention.

"What it really means is that it will take a long time before they recover and in some cases they be whole life dependent on our welfare system."